Newsletter

LGBT to hear from role model

Lubbock LGBT youth will have an opportunity to hear from a successful, lesbian role model later this month when Ellen Ratner speaks to PFLAG Lubbock.

Ratner, a White House correspondent for The Talk Radio News Service and Fox News commentator, is scheduled to speak at the Sept. 20 meeting of Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays.

“We want her to come as an example to the area youth that LGBT people can in fact have really high-profile careers and they can, in fact, change the world in many ways,” said Jane Minkley-Baker, PFLAG Lubbock president. “We don’t all have to be focused on our sexuality in order to change things for the world.”

The meeting will be at 7 p.m. in the Garden Room of St. John’s United Methodist Church, 1501 University Ave.

PFLAG Lubbock meetings are open to anyone, but visitors must be friendly to the LGBT community.

Hostile people are not welcome.

Ratner is is the White House correspondent and bureau chief for The Talk Radio News Service.

She covers the White House, Congress and government agencies.

Ratner is a credentialed reporter at the United Nations in New York, where Talk Radio News Service has a bureau.

Ratner is also a regular guest on Fox News’ “The Strategy Room” and is heard on more than 400 radio stations across the United States.

In addition to her career, Ratner is a fervent advocate involved with multiple humanitarian efforts including rebuilding post-Katrina Mississippi and fighting hunger in South Sudan.

Patricia Earl, coordinator of the Women’s Studies Program at Texas Tech, said she is interested in how Ratner balances her career with her advocacy.

“She is a leader,” Earl said, adding she would be interested to hear Ratner discuss the challenges and successes she has had organizing a group of people to continue to support a cause.

On Thursday, Ratner will be a guest speaker of the Women’s Studies Program on Tuesday, Sept 20, from noon-1 p.m. on campus in the Teaching Learning & Technology Center in the University Library, Room 153.

For more information and to register for this forum organized by Earl, contact the TLTC at (806) 742-0133.

At the PFLAG meeting, Ratner is expected to talk about several topics, including her career and any obstacles she faced as an out lesbian.

Minkley-Baker said LGBT youth at Tech and South Plains have expressed a desire to hear from role models who are more like them and not in-your-face advocates.

“They’re more interested in people like Ellen, who happens to be a lesbian woman, but who has made a wonderful career for herself and is a great human being,” Minkley-Baker said. “Those are the kinds of people that young people are asking us to help find for them (to say) ‘this is a person I can emulate.’”

Sexuality shouldn’t be an LGBT youth’s defining attribute.

“Just because we are a gay or lesbian person does not meant that is the only thing that we are about,” Minkley-Baker said.